Claims

Factual · Their own work or organisation

“I have not invested over a billion dollars of my own money into cleantech.”

Vinod Khosla, venture capitalist, in open letter to CBS · 14 January 2014 · Vinod Khosla hits back at 60 Minutes for cleantech errors (Fortune)

Vinod Khosla has not invested over a billion dollars of his own money into cleantech.

Mostly false False in substance, right in a detail.

The second judge said resolved false; the verdict shown is the first judge's.

What would count as true or false

Judge as of 2014-01-14. True: reliable records or reporting show that Khosla's personal investment in cleantech up to that date totalled $1 billion or less, counting his own money only and not LP capital in Khosla Ventures funds. Mostly true: his own investment was close to but under or around $1 billion, with the figure uncertain within a small margin. Mixed: sources conflict, with credible estimates on both sides of $1 billion. Mostly false: the claim rests on a technicality, e.g., his total cleantech commitments including his share of the funds exceeded $1 billion though direct personal outlays did not, while credible reporting attributes over $1 billion to him personally. False: credible evidence (e.g., Khosla's own earlier statements, fund documents or reporting) shows he had invested more than $1 billion of his own money in cleantech by that date.

Evidence

1. The Cleantech Crash CBS News (60 Minutes script) · 5 January 2014

   “Investor Vinod Khosla, known as the father of the Cleantech revolution, has poured over a billion dollars of his own money into some 50 energy startups.”

2. The Cleantech Crash CBS News (60 Minutes script) · 5 January 2014

   “And despite hundreds of millions of dollars invested – including 165 million of Khosla’s own money, KiOR is still in the red, and the manufacturing is so complex, it is riddled with delays.”

3. Vinod Khosla's Ingenious War on Global Poverty The Daily Beast · 22 October 2010

   “he put more than $100 million of his own money into what he likes to call "science experiments" that he thought had at least a tiny chance of changing the world.”

Reasoning

E1 is the CBS 60 Minutes script from nine days before the claim. It says Khosla "has poured over a billion dollars of his own money into some 50 energy startups," which directly contradicts the claim. That report is a single, unbroken-down total, and it is the very figure Khosla's statement disputes. The evidence does not show how much of it was his personal money and how much was Khosla Ventures fund capital. E2 gives only a single-company figure ($165 million in KiOR), and E3 cites more than $100 million of his own money as of 2010, so neither settles the overall total. The only independent evidence points to more than $1 billion, but because it rests on one figure with no breakdown, I rate the claim mostly false rather than false.

Cite this claim

Vinod Khosla, “Vinod Khosla has not invested over a billion dollars of his own money into cleantech.” (said 14 January 2014). Verdict: mostly false. Reliability API, claim c_3a701d9f301b, method 0.1.0+c876030c. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_3a701d9f301b